Sheltering in space In July last year, while living in a women’s shelter, I had thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrency hacked and stolen by way of a Facebook connection. The events leading up to that devastating moment don’t need air time except to say that I was broken enough to make hasty decisions. I don’t need to point out that when a woman finds herself in a shelter it’s nearing the last stop of options and the journey prior is one of trauma. I had to stop looking at the socials and isolate myself, to dial down. There were forest fires and a pandemic of fear raging. What I’ve come to understand is that the human brain has a mechanism that shuts down creative function to prioritize survival. I was most definitely in survival and made a catastrophic decision that resulted in me losing a large sum of money at a time when I needed every penny. It’s taken me until now to be able to pull the experiences out of my shame bucket, I’m in a safer place physically and metaphorically. I pulled away from social media for some months because I realized how toxic it can be when your faculties aren’t firing coherently. I’ve enjoyed social media over the last 12 years or so, but like the frog in the pot, things have boiled over and my nerves aren’t built for the intensity of it.
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